Representative and accountable metropolitan government is needed to lead metro-scale planning, infrastructure investment and services, and partnerships with the private sector and civil society.

President Xi Jinping and the rest of the Chinese leadership do not get to positions of national leadership without undergoing decades of trials to demonstrate their capacity to run a country.
Reuters/Carlos BarriaJanuary 6, 2016

The China Model features political meritocracy at the top, democracy at the bottom and experimentation in between. The West can learn from the best of Chinese leadership, even if it is authoritarian.

When our political institutions are market-driven, they risk becoming a democratic shell that no longer serves the people, as the European Union experience is showing.
Theophilos Papadopoulos/flickrDecember 2, 2015

Elections Singapore-style are so heavily stacked in favour of the PAP, which has ruled for 56 years, that the country's newly re-elected government is more authoritarian than democratic.

The federation’s problems have outlasted the leaders who sought transformative reforms a decade ago; their successors must be wholly committed and follow democratic principles if they are to do any better.
AAP/Alan PorrittJuly 13, 2015

The federalism discussion paper is out and the prime minister has called a leaders' 'retreat' to consider it. They should build on the Constitution's democratic principles to make the federation work better.

In the Anthropocene, human-driven forces are shaping the planet in ways that may risk the collapse of human civilisation.
Damián Bakarcic/flickrMarch 31, 2015

The Anthropocene, as an epoch of human-driven planetary change, poses huge environmental and political problems. But it could also force us to develop proper ecological and democratic accountability.

Chee Soon Juan, pictured campaigning for Singapore’s 2011 general elections, hopes to build on that success in the next election, which is widely expected to be held early, possibly even this year.
Wikimedia Commons/DexterleezhFebruary 25, 2015

Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.